India, UNESCO to set up a research institute

India and UNESCO has collaborated to set-up a state of art research institute. To be called Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, it will be inspired by Gandhi's vision of peace and sustainability.

Union Minister for HRD Kapil Sibal and UNESCO’s Director General Irina Bokova signed an agreement for the same in Paris recently. The Institute to be located in India is the first of its kind in the Asia Pacific region.

Kapil Sibal

The institute's core activity will lie in research and capacity building. It will encourage knowledge exchange, regional networking and catalyze innovation by helping to design and test new approaches to education, a government release said. An expert advisory group would soon be set up by UNESCO to develop an agenda for the institute.

"The institute comes at the right time, a time when the world is debating the contours of the century ahead. As the challenges of the 21st century are qualitatively different from the challenges of the 20th century, global understanding and education would assist in appreciating the impact of these challenges on peace and its relation to sustainable development," Sibal said after signing the agreement.